Lucy Mangan

Why Miranda is not guilty of misogyny

Several critics accuse Miranda Hart of misogyny and self-loathing. The fact that Hart has created, writes and stars in her own show on her own terms should be celebrated, loudly and lengthily, not scoured for faults.

Your next box set: Shine On Harvey Moon

Whether you call it comedy or drama, this beautifully written series about a postwar British family rebuilding their lives is a warm, loving delight.

The spoof documentary Whatever Happened to Harry Hill? was part of the Funny Fortnight celebrating Channel 4's 30th birthday. This is the channel, of course, on which Hill first appeared, back in 1997. The aptly-named Harry Hill Show was a gallimaufry of inspired idiocy that introduced us to the ever-elusive badgers' parade, a blue rubber cat called Stouffer, the sight of Bert Kwouk (formerly Cato in the Inspector Clouseau films) as Harry's lacklustre chicken catcher, Mai Sung - Harry's wife and stealer of his Abbey National book and ... well, look, if you weren't there, this will all be so much nonsense and if you were, you will know that the mere printed word cannot convey more than an ounce of the madness and delight that ensued.

Whatever Happened to ... was essentially a clips job, given shape by the conceit that the major players had all suffered a falling-out but were now hoping to get back together for one last show. Kwouk was the most resistant to this plan. "For his impressions, Harry just put a wig on!" he remembered, disgusted. "He didn't even try to match the voice!" Eventually, however, even he was convinced, and a glorious reunion - now that Harry has beaten the tawdry sild addiction that finally did for the troupe - took place.

If you were in a mind to be critical, you could say that the ratio of new material to clips, and the comparative levels of invention for each, were quite low. With links to match the generous and ebullient performances from the past, the whole thing could have sung, and better than Bert Kwouk doing Hey Little Hen. But you couldn't stay cross for long in the face of the Mattie Mince pledges (though "that was the sild talking," Harry reveals bravely now), the tiny jockeys, Peter Dickinson in the badger grooming bay and other sketches of yesteryear unspooling, as insanely as ever, before you. Happiness would keep on breaking through.

Vic and Bob returned to our screens, with another one-off show for the birthday celebrations. Vic & Bob's Lucky Sexy Winners - a quiz show, at least technically - opened with our trouserless hosts sporting platform heels and dancing as ever, although this time literally, to the beat of their own drums. Then a cardboard cutout of Simon Cowell as drawn by Reeves atop a pair of human legs kicked a lever to activate the clock and guests Chelsee Healey, Thomas Turgoose and Eddie Izzard ("Occupation?" "Spinster") competed to answer questions such as "Where is Antony Worrall Thompson - the moistest of the TV chefs - housed when not on TV?" and win prizes that included an energy drink and some talcum powder in a jar ("In a jar, in a jar, in a jar!"). It occurred to me that, unless I blinked and missed it, Reeves and Mortimer were the only things missing (Harry Hill's TV Burp titles got a brief look-in) from the festival of bonkers Britishness that was the Olympics opening ceremony. Danny Boyle probably couldn't find a frame of their work from the moment The Smell Of ... kicked off that wouldn't have finally tipped the whole fabulous, precariously balanced thing over into outright frothing madness incomprehensible across the globe.

Like Hill, you either find them funny or you don't and the paltry resources of the written word cannot hope to transport you from the latter to the former camp. Even the news that AWT is housed in Glasgow University Hospital when not on TV may not sway you. But I laughed till I cried and begged whatever god is in charge of these things for a whole Lucky Sexy winning series. I type till then with fingers crossed.

Amid such sparkling absurdity this offering from Funny Fortnight, Just Around the Corner, lay like a damp squib. It is a comedy from Outnumbered creators Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton, about the Pilch family (Jameses Fleet and Bolam as son-and-father-in-law, and Jennie Jacques as Fleet's recalcitrant teenage daughter Kia), who live in what is now the isle of Norwich in a globally warmed and flooded Britain. The script was waterlogged, but much could be forgiven for Daisy Beaumont's shining turn as terrifying regional tyrant Big Delia. When paired with Fleet's peerless dithering, you felt happiness begin to break out once more.

TV review: Last night's Funny Fortnight

Reviews of Whatever Happened to Harry Hill?, Vic & Bob's Lucky Sexy Winners and Just Around the Corner.

Britain's Oldest Stand Up (More4) was a slight, sweet film by Clair Titley, in the new First Cut series, about her uncle Jack Woodward. He is a 90-year-old Chelsea Pensioner who harbours a dream of resurrecting the comedy act he used to perform in the 50s and 60s and - one of his favourite pastimes being to watch the new bloods plying their trade on the television show Live at the Apollo every Friday night - playing the Hammersmith venue himself. "I've took a fancy to it!" he exclaimed, in a burry, rural West Country accent that must itself be disappearing as fast as any pasture land down there. "I can't explain it - it's just there!"

Thanks to comedy writer Les Keen, who wrote him some new material to get him up to the mark, comedian Ed Byrne, who agreed to let Jack be his warm-up man (and gently warmed up the audience himself for Jack before he came on stage) and some giant prompt cards, he did it. There wasn't much else to the story but the rare sight of a nonagenarian, thrice-married, triple-bypassed (last year) incurable optimist had a charm all of its own.

Over at Twenty Twelve (BBC2), the bad days are piling up. In the series finale we are counting down to handover day. With 18 days to go, there seems no solution to the problem of the opening ceremony fireworks setting off the MoD's ground-to-air missiles; the national bell-ringing celebration has received two entries and been repurposed by Siobhan as a competition with celebrity judge Sting, if she can just call in a favour from Davina McCall's pilates instructor Samphire; no one on the Deliverance team has made the shortlist for the Director of Posterity job; and Ian is still having "to think on his feet until he finds out where they've taken him".

It is a good job this was the last episode (even if it did leave the Sally/Ian, will they/won't they question cruelly, cruelly unresolved). As real-life events began increasingly to mimic their supposedly fictional counterparts (both have had security botches, desperate measures to mitigate bad ticket sales and coachloads of people getting lost through driver incompetence and there is every chance that McCall's pilates instructor is indeed fielding innumerable calls from everyone from Seb Coe down) it seemed increasingly likely that the opening ceremony in London would begin and end with the two merging streams creating an event horizon and swallowing the entire thing, Boris Johnson, Siobhan and every other implausible creation in between. Ah, well. Maybe next time.

The Angelos Epithemiou Show - review

A parsnip fired out of someone's bottom fails to make Lucy Mangan laugh.

Episodes - review

Episodes has been brilliant light relief from the surnames down.